Doppler Velocity Estimation Based on Spectral Characteristics of M-Sequence-Modulated Signals in Ultrasonic Measurement for Moving Objects

Abstract

Pulse compression using maximum-length sequence (M-sequence) can improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the reflected echo and distance resolution in the pulse–echo method. In the case of a moving object, however, the echo is modulated due to the Doppler effect. The Doppler-shifted M-sequence-modulated signal cannot be correlated with the reference signal, which corresponds to the transmitted M-sequence-modulated signal. Therefore, Doppler velocity estimation before the correlation and cross correlation of the received signal with Doppler-shifted reference signals has been proposed. In this paper, the proposed Doppler velocity estimation based on spectral characteristics of cyclic M-sequence-modulated signals is described. Then, the Doppler velocity estimation is evaluated based on computer simulations. The Doppler velocity can be estimated from the Fourier-transformed spectral density of cycles of the M-sequence-modulated signal with high resolution even in noisy environments. According to the evaluation, furthermore, the cycle number and the number of carrier waves in 1 digit of the M-sequence-modulated signal should be decreased to improve the resolution and accuracy when the length of the transmitted signal is determined.